The wind up there tastes like chalk and old bone.
I'm on the Dragon's back, thighs tight against scales that are warmer than they look, staring down at the Veil.
So this is where they put her.
No banners.
No heraldry.
No proud little crest pretending this is anything respectable.
Just stone.
Dark stone.
Long walls clinging to the cliff like something that doesn't want to be seen from below or above.
No towers.
No arrow slits.
Nothing that suggests defense.
Just height.
Just silence.
Windows cut thin and mean.
A courtyard sunk low enough to feel like a grave even from up here.
Women move inside.
Wrapped head to toe in charcoal.
No color.
No skin.
Bare feet on frost.
They don't walk so much as pass through the space.
Like smoke that forgot how to rise.
The Dragon circles once.
Slower than before.
"That," he says, "is where they keep her."
Not send.
Not marry.
Keep.
I watch the line of them kneeling.
Identical.
Folded.
Quiet.
"Wrapped," I mutter.
The word tastes worse the second time.
The Dragon tilts a wing, bringing us lower.
"Do you still intend subtlety," he asks, "or have we moved past that."
I don't answer right away.
I'm looking at the courtyard.
At the rows.
At the way nothing in there looks like it belongs to itself anymore.
"No," I say finally.
Not to him.
To the place.
"No," I repeat, softer.
Because this isn't a household.
It isn't a marriage.
It isn't even a prison in the usual, honest way.
It's storage.
And I already know what she looks like when someone tries to pack her away.
Inside the courtyard they kneel in rows.
Chanting.
"Blood binds.Flame dims.Pride dies."
I scan the line.
Third row.
Second from the left.
I know her shoulders.
You don't sleep pressed against someone in a frozen tower and forget the slope of their back.
And the lock of golden hair.
She is thinner.
The wrap hides everything else.
Her head is bowed.
A bell sounds.
Silence.
Total.
The chanting stops mid-breath.
One of the wrapped women — taller, straighter, authority in the way she doesn't move — steps forward.
"Novices do not raise their heads," she says calmly.
Her voice echoes.
Loma's chin twitches.
I see it.
She wants to look.
She doesn't.
"Three hundred days," the tall woman continues. "Without utterance."